DENVER — In what is rapidly careening towards one of the worst seasons in Blue Jays history, it was starting pitcher Edwin Jackson’s turn to script the latest humiliating chapter Friday night at Coors Field.

Showing repeated signs that he is well past his best before date and performing as if the Jays would be the 14th and final Major League Baseball team to employ him, Jackson was awful.

And yes, in terms of club history, historically so in a 13-6 blowout loss to the Colorado Rockies.

Jackson threw 77 pitches and managed to get just seven outs, exiting after 2.1 innings with his team trailing 10-2. That would include 10 runs on 10 hits in the partial night of work, with four walks and a couple of wild pitches thrown in to the mix of misery.

Jackson, who entered the game with a 12.71 ERA in seven previous appearances in the Mile High city was Rockies rocked in this barely watchable outing. By the end of his shift, Jackson’s Coors Field ERA had bumped to 14.67, the highest of any visiting pitcher ever to work here.

Not that first-year Jays manager Montoyo has much in the way of options, but it’s difficult to imagine a scenario where the Jays can with a straight face – or a reasonable explanation to its fan base – send Jackson to the mound to start another game.

It doesn’t sound like he’s going anywhere soon, however, as the Jays have precious few options both with the big league team and in triple A Buffalo.

“I don’t know,” manager Charlie Montoyo said when asked about how Jackson can get on track. “I just know he has good stuff and maybe his next outing will be a good one.”

He became just the third pitcher in Jays history to allow 10 runs or more in less than three innings of work and the first since the late, great Roy Halladay did so on April 29, 1999.

The Rockies had four hits and a 4-0 lead before Jackson, a bargain pickup by the Jays last month to fill a spot on a starting rotation dinged by injury, finally got an out. He didn’t exactly settle down, either, allowing four runs in the first, two in the second and four more in his abbreviated third inning.

In his last three outings, the 35-year-old has allowed 22 earned runs.

“As the end of the day it’s a matter of executing,” Jackson said. “My last few starts, my pitches just haven’t been sharp. and when your pitches aren’t sharp, balls are going to get hard. “That’s just point blank. You have to execute pitches and you have to eliminate pitches being across the middle of the plate.”As bad as he’s been, this ongoing debacle is not all on Jackson, however.

Some of the blame certainly has to be directed at team president Mark Shapiro and general manager Ross Atkins, who thought it would be prudent to dupe fans into stomaching a bargain-hunting approach to carry the early stages of the rebuild.

Getting young prospects playing time with an eye to the future is one thing, expecting less than outrage from the majority of its fan base is quite another.

It’s a long summer ahead of trying to sell tickets for a team that continues to slide into the abyss. Fans can be “patient” through a rebuild. But fans can also mirror management and opt not spend any money on the team until it hints at any interest in being competitive.

No drum roll necessary for the updated horror role:

— The Jays ended May with a record of 7-21, a month in which they were unable to win back-to-back games even once. That’s a dubious effort they’ve managed in back-to-back seasons now.

— In falling to 21-36, the Jays have lost eight of their past nine and have fallen a season-worst 15 games below .500. They’re also 16.5 games behind the AL East leading New York Yankees, quite an accomplishment before the calendar even flipped to June.

— The 21 wins in 57 games has them on pace for 60 ‘Ws’ and 102 losses. Should that projection hold, it would be the first time the team dropped 100 games since the 109 defeats of 1979. Of course that was a result directly attributable to the fact that the team was just in its third year of existence.

— Jays pitchers allowed two more home runs on Friday – both to big-hitting Rockies shortstop Trevor Story (first inning and seventh). That gives them 48 homers allowed in May, their most in any month in team history (previous skid mark was 45 in Aug, 2002 and Aug. 2009.)

— The Jays are now 0-4 thus far on this six-game road trip, having been swept for three at Tampa Bay earlier in the week. They’ve already been swept four times this season, three of those on the road.

AROUND THE BASES

A rare Jays bright spot on Friday came in the second inning when outfielder Randal Grichuk blasted his ninth home run of the season. The 469-foot shot was the milestone 100th round-tripper of the Texan’s career.

— The Rockies took advantage of the Jackson ineptitude to win a sixth consecutive home game. They also improved to 8-2 all time vs. the Jays in games played here on the strength of a rather formidable 17 hits on the night.

— A hearty “Vladdy, Vladdy, Vladdy” chant broke out among the ample Canadian contingent here in the eighth when Vlad Guerrero Jr. clocked his sixth homer of the season. The 436-foot blast cleared the centre-field wall and into the Coors Field pines. Guerrero followed that up with a line-drive double to lead off the ninth.

— Lourdes Gurriel Jr. continued his hot streak at the plate with a double off the wall in the eighth. Since being recalled from triple A Buffalo last week, Gurriel has at least one extra-base hit in all seven games he’s played.

“I’m in a great spot right now,” said Gurriel, whose latest hit was part of a four-run, too little, too late eighth for the Jays. “I feel very confident and I feel very comfortable.”

— Montoyo confirmed that the latest finger issue to limit starter Aaron Sanchez’s work won’t keep him out of Sunday’s scheduled start. Sanchez exited Monday’s game in Tampa with a torn fingernail on the middle finger of his right hand.

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